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Wind, solar supplement fossil fuels

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Friday April 4, 2014 5:11 AM

In his Saturday letter “Energy mandates should be reviewed,” Sam Randazzo of Industrial Energy
Users-Ohio made a lot of claims about how bad the energy-efficiency targets are that the Ohio
legislature enacted in 2008. Most of his claims were untrue.

We must do something to decrease our oil and gas usage. Yes, there is a boom now, but how long
will that last and what is the cost?

Earthquakes are occurring, and huge amounts of water are being used. Pipelines are leaking and
exploding, and oil tankers and rail cars are crashing, spilling oil over the land. Large sections
of West Virginia have been devastated by mountaintop removal, where they blow off the top of the
mountain and shove the rock and soil down into the valleys, removing the coal as they do.

Wind power and solar-energy generation would be just as cheap as oil and gas, if they were
subsidized to the same extent, and they don’t destroy the land or pollute the water and air.

Oil, coal and gas are not limitless. They were produced over millions of years. We need them,
but we should use them wisely. We should be building as much wind and solar generation as possible.
Of course, coal and gas will have to supplement wind and solar, but we will use less of it, making
it last longer.

Randazzo decried the loss of jobs for energy-intensive manufacturers, but the wind and solar
industries have more than 25,000 employees in Ohio, and they are growing. We should get behind the
energy-efficiency targets and strive to meet them. Why can’t Ohio be at the forefront of
clean-energy production?

The only thing holding us back is people such as Randazzo, who seem to believe that we should
ignore clean energy and continue using the same old dirty fuels that pollute the air, warm the
planet and will run out. I am betting on a better future for Ohio.